


The Face in the Crowd

by brightephemera



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Mystery, Serial Killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-23 12:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightephemera/pseuds/brightephemera
Summary: In the Sixth Great and Bountiful Human Empire's Shopping One, why is everyone afraid to walk outside? Martha Jones and the Doctor investigate an elusive menace.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Martha Jones
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The Face in the Crowd

Martha Jones swung out of the TARDIS and stopped short at the end of the alley with a dignified little squeak. On the capital planet of the Sixth Great and Bountiful Human Empire, the concourse of Shopping One was a cross section of the galaxy. For two hundred meters or more across and many times that long, humanoids in bright oranges and blues, trees in violet and brown, all shoppers toting angular clusters of shopping bags, all giving each other a complex shifting of space. And above, great white half-arches, blazing with a light that outshone the vague grey sky above.

“It’s a bit different than I remember,” said the Doctor. He looked at a passing woman. “Excuse me, which city is this?”

The woman looked them over, smiled, and continued.

“Excuse me! Excuse me, we’re just trying to find–”

Martha tripped on something and fell _through_ a tufted greying fellow, who slowed and stared, wide-eyed. “I say!” he said. “Watch yourself!”

Another woman slowed. “Wait, you’re meat here? Hey! Look at this one! Strolling down Shopping One, she is!”

More were looking. “Holograms,” said the Doctor.

“What, do you all just project here?” said Martha. “I mean, really. You don’t just take a stroll down to the corner shop? Ever? I thought _television_ made people lazy…”

“It’s the Pretty Face,” said the tufted man. “He’s still here.”

The Doctor cocked his head. “That doesn’t sound so bad. Some of my best friends are faces. When do I meet him?”

“If you’re flesh and blood on that concourse, I’d say you meet him about thirty seconds before you die.”

“Don’t shake hands,” said another in passing. “Just don’t. You see another person, just run t’other way.”

The Doctor looked at Martha. Martha looked at the Doctor.

“Right, then,” he said. “Allons-y!”

*

It was dark among the high towers of the residences down the ridge from the concourse. The three young women laughed and separated at the street corner.

One, with the build of a gymnast and the fashion sense of a diva, walked briskly down the stairs, holding her bag full of new clothes before her. A wispy man approached from below.

“Evening,” he said genially. “No troubles on the concourse tonight, I hope?”

He was a good-looking young man, scratching his back. The woman shot him a curious look. “Everything’s fine. Excuse me.”

“Carrying your own purchase. An old-fashioned girl.” The man was getting closer. “You could just have them zapped to your room.”

“Excuse me,” she said, louder.

“Oh,” he said, and tripped, knocking the bags loose. He grasped her wrist. “Oh, I’m so very sorry, lovely girl. You never did anything wrong.”

She screamed. Briefly. The funny thing was, he did, too.

*

It had gotten very late. The concourse seethed on regardless.

“Holograms,” said Martha. “One entire planet full of holograms.”

The Doctor squinted. “Oh, there are people. Sitting in their homes, playing it safe – but why? This is supposed to be the height of the Empire, not a parade of…ghosts.”

Martha was looking around. “If every single person in this Empire, or even just every person in this city, is projecting themselves out into this space…the power, has got to be incredible.”

“That’s part of it. That’s definitely part of it.” The Doctor had reached a terminal tucked into another high clean alley. He looked around, then waved his sonic screwdriver over the controls. “Why would a city be afraid to meet someone in the flesh?”

“Pretty Face? It sounds like a murder investigation. S.”

“They’ve got surveillance technology here, there’s no way a killer could get away from more than one scene without being tagged. There’s something else going on.”

Martha was reading fast. “Thirteen people associated with the Pretty Face. Men, women, local, foreign. Starting three months ago. Then two, then five weeks, then four, three…the last few have been every three days. It doesn’t sound like whoever it is is choosing that schedule.”

“No,” said the Doctor. “And look. The last few died with their faces…damaged. As if almost half erased.”

“And here’s a puzzle. The last one had an eyewitness. Who states that it was perpetrated by the victim before.”

“A shapeshifter,” said the Doctor. “That narrows it down—” he made a face—“somewhat.”

“You meet a lot of those, then?”

“Well I would hardly know it, would I? Realistically…not so many shapeshifters need to kill their models. If you remember the Chameleon circuit I used back there in 1913, it took only a dollop of human DNA to synthesize something suitable. Samples, not entire lives. No, somebody’s _trying_ to make a splash. What do you think?”

“I think we have a body hopper. Who’s getting desperate fast.”

“And we might start with the news.”

*

“There it is,” said Martha.

“Good morning to you, too,” said the Doctor. “So what’s the word?”

Martha brought up the image over the TARDIS panel: a picture of a woman, athletically built, pretty. “That’s the face it just started wearing.”

“If it’s really desperate to hop it’ll be on that concourse today. It can’t use a dead woman’s ID to get out of the city. So we look.”

“But how? It’s chaos out there. You would have to…”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Yeeees?”

Martha grinned. “I did say the holographic projectors take a lot of power.”

“And what if they just…lost it, temporarily?”

“Yeah, but you can’t actually knock out every holoprojector on that strip.”

“Never underestimate a strategically mismatched endpoint impedance. Let’s get halfway down this concourse!”

They raced through the crowd, threading the gaps between the courteously separated holograms, occasionally clipping shopping bags with a tiny electric buzz. They didn’t slow until they spotted a smaller lamp between shop fronts.

“Good,” said the Doctor, “there’s a relay.” He took out his sonic screwdriver and opened a panel. “Look innocent.”

“Has that ever worked?” said Martha.

“Well, it’s never going to if we don’t try. Ready to clear the deck?”

“Ready.” Martha looked innocent.

There was a peculiar _whump_ sound from nearby. The shoppers vanished.

Martha and the Doctor looked down the concourse. It was empty, all straight white road and arcing white lights, absurdly spacious without its complement of bustling sentience. Without the crowd Martha could see gardens down the center, fountains streaming nearly to the level of the lights. The glittering shop façades trailed off to either side. Down the other way, straight on until forever, nobody moved. There were statues, spindly, stylized, looking out here and there, as if ready to swing back into the crowd at any moment.

The Doctor looked around. “Nobody here but you, me...and a dozen city planners’ fingerprints.”

“Who are they?” said Martha, pointing at the nearest statue.

“Oh, probably the controlling shareholders of the shops hereabout. They do that in this time period.”

“You're joking.”

“Not at all. Now, this is beautiful, but it's also empty. No perpetrators here.”

“And no victims.”

“No.” He smiled. “Let's re-start the world.”

In the moment before the holograms blinked in, not far away, a woman with the build of a gymnast poked her head out of a shop and watched the two turning away.

*

“We could go to the police,” said Martha.

“Too much paperwork. Much better to access their files and stay out of their way. No, if she isn’t on the prowl out there she might not be a danger just now.” He headed down between shops to a sparse mist-wrapped park.

“You don’t want to go there,” said someone.

Martha and the Doctor turned. The pretty woman was there, bright in purple.

“Oh,” said the Doctor. “Hello. I’m the Doctor. This is Martha. I take it you’re the Pretty Face.”

She smiled, a little unevenly. “Don’t. I’ll blush. You know who I am?”

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

“Me?” The woman…stopped. As if every cell in her body was struggling to recall. “I don’t remember. I never did anything else. It’s just that I get so tired. Then I saw you, interfering.” She scratched her back.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” said Martha.

“Let me look. I’m a Doctor, it’s all right. You’re safe. Show me what you’re hiding.”

She looked tearful for a moment. Then she turned around and pulled at the back of her shirt. It split halfway down her back over a mess of red and blue circuitry.

“There she is,” murmured the Doctor, scanning with his sonic screwdriver.

“What?” said Martha. “What is it?”

“It’s pretty,” crooned Pretty Face. “So lovely.” She was twisting to eye the screwdriver.

The Doctor eased closer. “See the wires to her palms, too. It’s a Chameleon circuit…fused with her spine. Total biological rewriting on command…and she can’t get away from it.”

Martha remembered the Doctor having used something like it, not so long ago. “What it did to you…”

“That pain. Every time she touches someone. No wonder she’s not quite there.”

Martha touched the edge of the device. “It’s infected. You need antibiotics, you need–”

The Pretty Face giggled. “We’re past that. You named it, but you can’t fix it. Nobody can. It’ll ride me into the _dust_.” She whipped around and grasped the Doctor’s wrist. The Doctor yelped. Her fingertips dug into his forearm. For a strange, aching few seconds, the stranger gripped, and the Doctor inhaled, and his face twisted a tiny bit, and Martha watched; and then the grip freed.

“Thanks,” cackled the woman, and squirmed away, and started running toward the massed crowd.

“Hey!” yelled Martha without moving. The Doctor was on his knees, pushing up his sleeve to stare at the livid marks the woman’s fingertips had left. Martha studied his face, looking for the slightest sign of feature loss. “What did she _do_?” said Martha.

“She tried to consume me,” the Doctor said indignantly. “She tried to steal me! I feel…strange. Twice the energy, at least for a while. Adrenaline’s a funny thing.”

“But you stopped her. She didn’t get…”

The Doctor stood and ran a hand down his face. “Oh, I don’t think she got it.” He grinned. “Come on.”

“We could turn off the concourse again,” she said, jogging alongside.

“She knows we can do it. She won't be seen in public with that face again. So. I do not believe this person’s movements are random, and her victims might be able to tell us more.”

*

“Inspector Clouseau, Ministry of Wellbeing,” said the Doctor, waving his psychic paper at the front desk of the precinct office.

“Inspector Cato,” said Martha, and stared down the police officer who for just a moment looked like he might be questioning their being here.

“The Pretty Face files, I take it all the victims are stored in the same facility?”

“We’ve buried the oldest,” said an officer. “We made extensive notes first.”

“I see, well done. Downstairs here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.” The Doctor’s turn was a total dismissal, and Martha kept pace.

Downstairs it took only a few tries to find the door to the morgue. Ten beds were set up with ten plastic-wrapped bodies on them.

“So if they have samples…” said the Doctor.

“Over here,” said Martha.

Something creaked.

Quietly, every body in the room sat up. They all turned their faces up in some specific, incomprehensible direction. Their faces were twisted, wiped half off, rearranged, and terrible.

*

The tall brown-haired man was dressing in the alley outside the clothing store. “Hm,” he said to no one, pulling on a long brown coat. And “Why do I have so few _teeth_?” He stepped back into the road, adjusted his collar, and looked up at the cryptic geometrical sign of the next shop.

*

“Something’s happened,” said the Doctor. “The circuit must be going berserk. These…”

They were pulling their plastic wraps tight around themselves. They moved like any person would move, only their features were warped as if somebody had tried to pull their faces off. They looked around at one another, touched their own faces as if trying to make it make sense again.

Martha stared. “Doctor?”

“Ideas?”

“We’re not looking at a drain. It's an exchange. A messy one. These people aren't dead yet, they're just in the wrong bodies in their last moments.”

The Doctor winced. “Oh, I'm sorry. I don’t even know if you can hear me, burning out…burning out fast now that you’re awake. I’m sorry.” He turned to Martha. “Get to the TARDIS.”

“I'm not leaving you here!”

“If this person has technology as advanced as we just saw, a door might not stop them. You’re clever. Keep it safe.”

Martha cast a look at the room full of dead and mostly faceless people. Some were hugging one another now, clinging. Nobody talked.

“Do you understand?” Martha said to them. “Someone attacked you with a device that lets them copy your body. They took your life and gave back only a fraction, and that fraction’s fading. I’m sorry. It’ll be over soon.” Some were looking at her now, tilting their misshapen heads. “I’m sorry.”

The Doctor touched her shoulder. “Go on, now.”

“Where are you going?” said Martha.

The Doctor turned back toward a table with a pile of glass slides. “I'm taking this and going into the laboratory next door to check the pattern. Chromosome by chromosome if I have to.”

“So I go off alone? She can be you!”

“We don't know that. That’s a very, very difficult transformation.” He started running. “Besides,” he called, “you’d know.”

Martha ran out and started down the concourse, dodging among the crowds. At one point a high-piled trash cart sent her veering to one side and she ran directly through a figure.

She staggered to a stop just as if she had collided. The figure turned to stare at her. “You! That walker from the other day! When I heard the Pretty Face had struck again I was sure it would be you.”

“Yes, thanks,” said Martha, and kept running.

*

The Doctor closed the door behind himself. He pulled out his glasses and settled them in place. He spun up three consecutive machines that would allow him to trace whatever similarity there was to be found in the Pretty Face’s victims. He cycled to the first one.

Something bumped the door.

“Not now,” he called. “Stay calm, I’m getting this.”

Bump.

“I’ll be right with you,” he yelled, staring into a microscope. “This is almost ready. _Still_ no pattern…”

The door crashed in with all the force of a kick to the handle. The Doctor stood up and whipped off his glasses. The victims with the ruined faces, creaking in their translucent sheets, pushed in from the hallway.

“Oh, now,” he said. “I’m doing all I can. Please, we’ll find the one responsible. I just need to work.”

They came closer, holding out their hands. The Doctor leaned back. “Stay calm. Don’t–don’t—” The nearest seized his lapels and hauled him up. The Doctor faced a man with a dark oval face, no nose, a mouth slashing down across one cheek, and two pale eyes squeezed in a corner. The emotion was still readable: terror.

“I’m sorry,” said the Doctor. “I can’t help you. All I can do is stop—”

Others were grabbing him, clinging. Then one took a swing.

The Doctor dove between clambering bodies, twisting free of more than one frigid hand clasp. They were gripping, clutching, scratching. He had to kick hard to get as far as the door. He pushed through, fused the hinges behind him, and started running.

Upstairs he grabbed the first competent-looking officer. “Seal the laboratory downstairs. For three days. It's not safe, just...three days. Let them die in peace.”

The woman frowned. “Whoever you are...they _are_ dead.”

“Leave them be, Inspector. They're frightened enough as it is.” He ran.

*

The TARDIS was there. The TARDIS was undamaged. A domicile the size of the TARDIS and they didn’t have a weapon. Martha took a particularly hefty ruler that appeared to be marked in three different alien measuring systems and stepped out. The TARDIS was fitted neatly into the end of an alley; she walked out toward the concourse to keep watch.

The Doctor…sauntered…out of the crowd.

He looked down at Martha. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, finally. I took a bad turn there, got hit in the head by an angry shopper, ah, more than one time. I’m still not sure I’m seeing straight. Are you all right?” He flashed the sonic screwdriver for a second and pocketed it. “ _He_ didn’t come this way, did he?”

“No,” she said. She wasn’t sure what a minor concussion would do to the Doctor anyway. He was almost certainly lying, only…he had the screwdriver. If he was telling the truth, all he needed was a little patience. “Yes, well. We should probably get back to the TARDIS.”

“Oh, certainly, lead the way.”

Wrong answer. The plan was quick and, admittedly, none too clever. Martha took a step toward him. Then another. “What,” she said, “is that all I get today?”

The Doctor looked blankly at her. Then he shook himself. “Of course, sweetheart. Let’s get away together.” The smile and its longing look was more grotesque than she had even imagined.

And now that she knew, she couldn’t stomach playing anymore.

She stepped away. “The Doctor would never say that,” she said, her voice shaking. “And did you really bring me a fake sonic screwdriver?”

The Pretty Face shrugged. “I couldn't exactly get to his.”

“Unbelievable. Sit down.”

To her considerable surprise, the Pretty Face did, perching on a short standing post. His brown eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth twitched. “You should see my other pocket.” He drew out a knife nearly the length of his forearm and held it idly across his torso. Oh. She just hadn’t thought the Doctor would carry a weapon. He grinned at her. “I do intend to get you and your friend. And then leave.”

Her gut curled up cold. The Doctor’s eyes, the Doctor’s voice. “Use someone else's face for that. Please.”

He sniffed. “I don't think I will.” He frowned and scratched his back and jerked his head toward the alley. “Now get me in there.”

“I can't. The Doctor has the key.” Which was one lie and one truth, but she just had to sit here delaying the somewhat less than linear-thinking Pretty Face until the Doctor got back.

“Is he a dangerous man, the Doctor?”

“You have no idea.”

“He didn't fight me. His life at risk, and he didn't fight. Even the frightened students fought. It’s so nice that my last turn was a pacifist. So! Tell me about me, girl.” He waved the knife idly between his hands. “I feel…stronger, here. I must be very long-lived. How many of my organs are doubled up? The hearts are distracting. Wouldn’t you love to hear more about that?”

“You don't get a lot of conversation, do you?”

The Pretty Face turned thoughtful. For a while. Finally he said “No, not really.”

“It's just you. Jumping and jumping…you haven't had human contact in, how long?”

He touched his lips. “Three minutes.” His familiar close-lipped smile slammed her. “Thanks for that.”

“You could stop this. You could always stop this.”

He sniffed hard. “No. What I could do is kill you. Kill you, take his toys, be on my way.”

“You’re not taking the TARDIS.” Free passage off this place? No. Not ever.

“Does he have friends, girl? Is he famous? Popular? Or is he the kind of man that really deserves a personality transplant? What species even _is_ he?”

The shape separated itself from the crowd for mere seconds before it brought up its hand. Martha Jones kept her eyes on the Pretty Face while the Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver.

“Time Lord,” said the Doctor. “I’m the only one left.” Buzz, and the Pretty Face’s back arched wildly. The knife fell. “You don’t count.”

The Pretty Face screamed. And it screamed in the Doctor’s voice, a pitch of agony Martha had only heard twice before and never meant to hear again. The Doctor lowered the screwdriver and the Pretty Face curled up in a fetal position. The back of its coat was scorched.

The Doctor stepped closer. “You’ve done this too many times. Even a Time Lord’s flesh isn’t enough to keep your body running. I’m sorry, traveler. But your time is up, and your circuit is never going to hurt anyone again.”

“No,” growled the Pretty Face, and surged to seize Martha's leg above the sock.

It felt like her everything was draining out the searing finger marks on her ankle. She moaned and tried to locate her own kicking muscles. Her mouth was slipping. She got a nerve in his forearm with a hard stomp. Buzz again. Pretty Face twisted and bucked and grasped. The Doctor was leaning down. Martha twitched. And then the hand released.

Martha sat up and checked her face. All clear. She looked to where the Doctor crouched beside the Pretty Face. The Doctor was pulling the Chameleon circuit out of the Pretty Face's scorched coat. The Pretty Face lay in profile, brown eye tearing up.

“Tell me something,” said the Doctor to the fallen being. “Why them? And why me?”

“Because they were beautiful. Let me…let me show you…”

“You can't anymore. Every time you changed, you hurt those echoes of the people you’ve killed. Let it rest.”

The Pretty Face's back was a scorched ruin, open to the bone. He sobbed once, and then he was still. At rest he looked like the Doctor, only tired.

Martha looked down. “Won’t we see what he was originally?”

“He’s forgotten,” said the Doctor under one spiked eyebrow. “You kept him busy long enough. We should go.”

They turned away from the tall thin brown-haired man in the long brown coat where he lay in his attitude of unbearable pain.

“Are you all right?” said Martha.

“Yeeah.” The Doctor tucked the remaining Chameleon circuitry into his jacket and sniffed once. “He didn’t do anything embarrassing, did he?”

Martha shook her head hard. “Nothing you’ve never done.”

“Good. Well, let’s go, then.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“Let’s.”

A pause.

“That was weird.”

“Yeah, a little.” The Doctor scratched his ear. “Does my hair really do that?”

“I think he gelled it a bit much.”

“Told you you could tell.”

“Yeah,” said Martha. “It wasn't the same.”


End file.
